This is the way the show ends, not with a bang but with a whimper. That whimper was Jackie Goldschneider as she tottered to her car, waiting to turn a corner because the opposite side of the epic battle of New Jersey was waiting around the corner and would curse her out for her behavior. Yes, this is the epic finale that has been hyped since the first trailer dropped for the season, but it didn’t seem epic. It seemed … the same. The same grinding of gears, the same talking in circles, the same hatred from the same people in the same direction. I mean, it was great reality television, but it is absolutely the end of the road for these women.
After the episode, I kept thinking about this quote from Jackie about why she met with Luis’s ex back in 2021, way before Margaret ever did. At the time, she and Teresa were attacking each other like ants on a gummy bear dropped on a playground floor. “So if Teresa was to say to me, ‘Your husband did this,’ I could say to her, ‘Well, your husband did this.’ That’s the game. That is the game we were playing.â€
Yes, that is the low-down, dirty game that has become The Real Housewives of New Jersey. I don’t know when it started. Was it when Teresa and Melissa finally decided to stop pretending they liked each other? Was it when Teresa couldn’t understand Jackie’s analogy? Was it when Marge threw Danielle Staub’s husband in the pool? Was it when Danielle pulled Marge’s ponytail? Was it when Siggy flickered? Was it when Teresa went to jail? Was it when Teresa accused Melissa of being a stripper? Was it when Caroline Manzo told Danielle Staub she was a garbage clown? Did it start when Dina Manzo found out about Cop Without a Badge? Was it the table flip? Maybe from the very beginning, the game was too cutthroat, too tawdry, too violent. It was all about digging up dirt from the community, dragging that dirt onto the show, and then bashing each other with it until they looked like desiccated meatballs lying on the side of the road.
At one point during the mêlée at the Last Supper, Teresa tells Danielle Cabral and Jen Aydin to knock it off. Melissa responds, “Knock it off? You’re the queen of this shit.†This lead to a wonderful standoff where Teresa calls Melissa a “whore†repeatedly while Melissa just poses there and twirls her hair, her very existence getting Teresa hotter than a lighter that has been held aloft throughout the entirety of “Born to Run.â€
It is shortly after that that Jen Fessler, who is nominally co-hosting the event, decides to get up and leave. “You’re used to this level of disgusting, and I’m not,†Jenf says as she exits even less than halfway through. Yes, the game on New Jersey has gotten disgusting. They’re all doing terrible shit to each other, they’re all taking to the press, they’re all talking to people from the DMs with axes to grind. None of them are innocent, and this is what happens when it gets too dark and too dirty; we end up at a stalemate where the only person who wins is the janitorial crew at Rails Steakhouse.
The showdown begins before they ever get to lunch when Marge has over Dolores and Jen Fessler (wearing Eileen Davidson’s denim jumpsuit) to talk about what is going on. Marge finally admits that she talked to Luis’s ex, but says she did it after all of the times Teresa accused her of it. She did it, she says, to confirm the Bo Dietl of it all.
As Marge is asking about the summit, Teresa calls to denigrate her, and Dolores asks about the pre-reunion meeting Marge threw that she never denied. She says she invited Dolores, but Dolores said she didn’t want to come. As soon as that leaves her mouth, Dolores calls her a “lying cunt.†The two go back and forth about whether or not Marge invited her, and Dolores is exploding like “Mount Suvius,†as Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny says. It’s so odd for Dolo, usually so calm, to get so upset about this. She says in confessional she thought Marge was trying to make her out to be a bad friend to Teresa. Yes, I get it, but the activation seemed unwarranted.
Next, we see a montage of all women getting on their Mob Wives finest for the Last Supper while talking to their partners. Most of the men are supportive, offering clothing advice and pep talks. Not Luis Ruelas. “I hope Margaret and her family suffer. I hope her son suffers,†he says, wearing his dopey-ass “Transcend†T-shirt that he’s probably selling on his Instagram. Who wants people to suffer? I have all sorts of nemeses I would like to see get a terrible haircut or get yelled at for a stupid tweet, but do I want them to actually suffer? No. Luis says he wants Marge’s family to suffer as their children have suffered from what she’s done.
Here’s my biggest question: What exactly has Margaret done to Teresa? What is she accusing her of? What are the specifics, and how did the family suffer? It all rings hollow. Yes, Marge plays dirty, but suffering? She has done nothing that bad to Teresa except occasionally stand up to her when she was behaving like an asshole. Teresa’s hatred seems less natural and more like something a red-faced manipulator placed into her head and whipped up until it became giant, like what little of Teresa’s brain existed before was replaced by a shit-stained meringue of Luis’s making. (Luis also says of John Fuda, “If people knew his real story, they’d be laughing all the way to the bank,†which is not what that expression means. It’s a malapropism just like Teresa would use, further proof they’re sharing their sole remaining brain cell.)
Finally, we get to Rails Steakhouse, where Dolores thinks they should have this event because it is a place they all know and it will bring the ladies calm. Yes, nothing says “serenity†like the New Jersey Transit train rushing past, horns ablaze, every 20 minutes. Everyone arrives in slow motion showing off their outfits. Teresa arrives last and says, “Do I have to sit across from [Margaret] because she’s going to end up wearing [the food].†Way to immediately bring it all down to your level, Tre.
The first people to start addressing their issues are Jen Aydin and Danielle, but it quickly spirals out of control with Jen Aydin saying that Danielle is jealous of her and Danielle insinuating that Jen’s husband hates her. As she always does, Jen takes it right into the basement by making fun of Nate’s “man boobs†and saying Danielle is too brawny. Danielle launches across the table like a WWE wrestler, and that is the first time we see the security guards standing just out of frame. This is when Jen Fessler leaves and the whole evening turns to shit.
Next, we turn to Teresa and Marge. Teresa says she has nothing to say to Marge because she deals in facts and Marge is a liar. Teresa keeps saying she has proof against Margaret, that she talked to Luis’s ex. What proof does she have? That Marge was subpoenaed? That is no proof at all. They could have had their lawyer subpoena Big Bird, but that doesn’t mean Big Bird also talked to the ex. (However, RadarOnline has it on excellent authority that they did meet once at an IHOP in Wayne.) There is no proof, and if there was, Teresa would have shown it. Also, I ask again, proof of what? Marge cops to talking to the ex. So what? What came out of those conversations that hurt Teresa or her family? Marge says that she never even talked to this woman; she only sent her a few DMs.
Melissa points out that they all hear from all sorts of people all the time. Melissa recounts talking to Luis’s niece from his first marriage, who warned her against Luis. I mean, this shit happens all the time. Teresa and Jen Aydin met with Marge’s ex-friend Laura. They talked to John Fuda’s ex. Marge hasn’t done anything that they haven’t done. Still, Teresa keeps talking about things that are “proven,†but offers no substantiation. They are proven because she says they are. Case M-er F-er closed.
After a brief argument about whether or not it is gross to sleep with a plumber (the official answer is no unless it happens on or near a clogged toilet), things devolve once again as Marge tries to say something, but every time she gets more than four words out, Teresa interjects with something unsubstantiated, underhanded, or both. Finally, Marge just blurts it out: Jackie had Luis’s ex over to her house.
This wasn’t quite a RealityVonTease moment, but it was sure close. Jackie denies it a couple of times and then says it was true and she was glad that it came out because she was nervous how Teresa would take it. Teresa doesn’t care because she says that Jackie was mad at her then and Teresa would have done the same thing.
That’s it. That is where this game began: with Teresa. As Melissa said, she is the queen of this shit. She’s the only one who has been there through all of this; she is the one who resorts to name calling, to aggression, to hypocrisy, to bringing in rumors to tar the people she doesn’t like. She set the rules of the game and doesn’t mind that Jackie played by them because she’s on her side now. However, as Jen points out, Teresa’s brain is powered by an adding machine where the division button doesn’t work, so it sometimes takes her eight to ten business days to figure out how she really feels.
By the end of the sit-down, we haven’t learned anything new except that Jackie talked to Luis’s ex. Again, I don’t see what the crime is here or that anything happened because of it. Is there anything that came out of their meeting that ended up on the show? Did Jackie take any of the information she got and do anything with it? I don’t know because the accusations are vague, and if just meeting with this woman is a crime, then it is a crime they’re all guilty of. Give them all the electric chair.
Team Melissa leaves and convenes in the parking lot, with Jackie skulking around the corner afraid of running into them. Teresa and Melissa still hate each other. Teresa and Marge still hate each other. Jen and Danielle still hate each other. Jackie still sucks the absolute most and I hope that another season on this reality show was worth selling her soul, her credibility, and her reputation. Jen Fessler is still sitting at home trying to learn guitar and failing miserably and can’t wait to tell anecdotes about her time on the show like she does about the time she rimmed James Gandolfini. Nothing has moved, nothing has changed.
“People just don’t know how to stop hating,†Dolores says in confessional. “It just built up. And everyone cuts so deep. it’s toxic.†That’s the problem: Everyone started cutting so deep in a way to win. They all played Teresa’s game, and it led to all of their corpses lying in the parking lot of a suburban steakhouse with nothing but 100,000 Instagram followers and a shoddy bit of fame to show for it. They cut so deep they could never forgive; they cut so deep they needed the ex–best friends and hair girls and former strip-club owners to come and give their testimony, each one thinking they were getting a little closer to victory, but each one of them descending further into darkness.
After everyone left, Dolores sat by herself in the ruined Mosaic Room and picked at a free dessert. She threw her jacket over her shoulders like a cape, walked past the A/V Room (Rails has an A/V Room?), and gave a “Thank you, and I’m sorry†to the hostesses who were hopped up on drama and the sugar from the free mints they keep by the door. Dolores walked outside, into the autumn chill, and walked across the parking lot, past her Rolls-Royce, right up to the edge of the tracks. It was 5:18, and the train would come by any second. She could see it now, losing its blurriness in the distances. “Bllllllaaaaaaarrrrrrrrr,†the train roared as it grew closer. “Blllllllaaaaarrrrrr blllllaaaaarrrrrrr,†again. Dolores picked up one foot and it hovered in the air as the monotonous rhythm got louder and louder, closer and closer, meaner and meaner until she couldn’t decide what to do next.